


Like the Tide

by Amrynth



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Mermchiru, Sparkle Sparkle 2019, as i like to call it, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 21:44:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17434043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amrynth/pseuds/Amrynth
Summary: Haruka is about to get fired, again.  This time it's because she's going to rescue a beautiful mermaid.





	Like the Tide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amuk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amuk/gifts).



> For Sparkle Sparkle 2019! My sparkle is tumblr's kumeko, I hope you enjoy! I had a lot of fun with the prompts you gave!

By the end of her shift, Haruka was prone to mopping along corridors in the back with her headphones on and her head down. The aquarium was closed at that point and she’d already done her portion of the front of house and moved on to back. It was easier to work head down, following walls and corridors and only really knowing where to go based on door frames that opened with her keycard and door frames that rejected her card. So, when she pushed through a partially open door without needing her card, Haruka didn’t think much of it or even notice the restricted personnel sign.

She had, as Makoto often liked to tell her, her head in the clouds. Haruka insisted this couldn’t be accurate because she was trying to keep her head down this time, otherwise she was never going to afford to fix the engine in her car. Not if she got fired again. 

The pattern of light on the ground she was mopping changed. It had been solid from the fluorescents overhead; the behind the scenes part of the aquarium wasn’t quite as fancy as the front with the environmentally friendly, aesthetically pleasing lights and wide windows with a view of the bay. But now there was the dance of water reflecting light onto the floor and Haruka stopped her mop. This wasn’t part of her usual routine. 

Haruka lifted her head slowly to look where she’d ended up; half the room was a typical space set up for studying the very large tank that dominated the room. The other half of the room was a glass wall separating her from the tank that made up the second half. She watched the water ripple at the top of the tank, the way the grid guarding the top of it was set several feet beneath the surface and even above that it was lit artificially rather than being exposed to the open air. Quarantine? Was it a tank with invasive species inside? She didn’t see anything moving inside so maybe nothing was set up yet and it was all in preparation for a sample that was going to get moved into the tank soon. 

Something shifted in the corner of the tank and Haruka lifted her hands to lower her headphones from where they covered her ears. She moved down the wall of glass between her and the water, trying to move to where she could see into the dim corner better. 

From the darkness the shape sprang at the glass, making Haruka jump. It was bigger than she’d anticipated, longer than she was tall and just as wide. In fact it was entirely too human shaped in most aspects, other than the long tail that made up over half its- her length. Haruka almost dropped her mop, staring at what was, for lack of a better term, a mermaid trying very hard to intimidate her. The mermaid was faintly blue-green from head to toe, the color concentrated on her tail, shoulders and hair and lightening to a pale mint on the more human torso. Her hair, turning the darker green of a deep ocean toward the ends, floated in loose waves along her shoulders. Now that her initial scare hadn’t chased Haruka off, she was looking at the human with blue eyes.

Haruka lifted a hand and pressed the palm against the glass. She had her cart with her, when she was done in the room she would clean the glass to get rid of any fingerprints. But she wanted to know if the mermaid was intelligent, she certainly looked that way. This was a very small tank for a creature, intelligent or otherwise, of Haruka’s size to be stuck in. Inside the tank, those blue eyes were moving from Haruka’s face to her hand, the broom, and up to the grid covering the top of her tank. Even if she didn’t respond to Haruka’s hand, it was clear from her expression and her eyes she was intelligent, sentient. And that wasn’t just the same anthropomorphization Haruka tended to give all her adopted strays at all. 

After a long consideration of the hand pressed against the glass, while the figure in the tank drifted slowly closer, she pressed her hand to the same point on the other side of the glass. They remained that way for a moment, time seeming to hold still, Haruka’s eyes going from where their hands met to find those of the mermaid. She smiled. She felt hopeful that maybe, as human in appearance as half of her was, the gesture would communicate that she didn’t mean any harm. 

In the water, the mermaid’s hands moved, creating purposeful gestures as her eyes watched for Haruka to recognize them. Haruka followed the motion of her hands and appreciated, not for the first time, elegant fingers and delicate wrists and a ridge of spine along her lower forearm that terminated in a frill of fin. She was trying to talk to Haruka in sign language and she wished she understood. 

“Wait a second, let me look…” 

Haruka help up one finger and turned to consider the room behind her, looking to see if there was, say, a primer on how to ask in sign language if someone needed help. Of course there was nothing of the sort so she pulled up her phone and looked up a few signs. 

She knew her hand signals were, at best, probably childish and Haruka kept looking at her phone and then back to the mermaid as she signed them. “You. Happy?”

The mermaid watched her hands, head canted to one side as she tried to make sense of gestures that were little better than a toddler’s. Slowly she repeated what Haruka had said, elegant hands making the gestures clearer and much more like those she had looked up on her phone. Haruka copied her, hoping that she understood what she was asking. She knew she didn’t have the finesse (yet) required to ask the mermaid if she was a captive, if she wanted to be in a tank smaller than the closet in Haruka’s studio apartment. 

After a moment, the mermaid shook her head, hands moving to say more than Haruka could follow. She paused and signed with slow, exaggerated motions that even Haruka was able to understand. “Not happy.”

Haruka had the mop leaning against her shoulder and neck so her hands were free to move and to navigate her phone. She frowned when the mermaid made herself clear and had to turn to her phone to try and ask in a concise way her next question. A few steps and she was standing right at the edge of the tank and kept sneaking glances at the mermaid. She was, perhaps, the most beautiful thing Haruka had ever seen. It was a shame anything was trapped in a tank like this, particularly if it was sentient and knew it was trapped. 

“Want. Help?” Haruka tried to be more deliberate in her gestures, more precise to make her meaning clearer. 

There was no hesitation in the mermaid’s response, moving toward the glass and nodding fervently. 

“Help. Help.” She repeated the gesture at Haruka, then swam up to push and rattle the grid keeping her in the tank. 

Haruka gazed at her, then switched from the browser on her phone to her contacts, scrolling for the one person she could rely on to help. It was fairly late so she let it ring through once, waited long enough to clean her handprint off the glass, and then dialed again. 

“What is so important you’re blowing my phone up?” The voice on the other end of the line was heavy with sleep.

“Hi Makoto,” Haruka put the full power of a smile into her voice. 

“No.” The other side of the conversation hung up. 

Stubborn, Haruka dialed Makoto again. It wasn’t until the very last ring that Makoto picked up, sounding less sleepy than before. “Okay. Yes. I’m awake.” 

“Have I told you how delightful you are today Kino-san?” 

Makoto made a noise on the other end of the line that was somewhere between a laugh and a snort and a sound of disbelief. “Stop. What’s up?” 

“Do you think you could bring your truck to the aquarium?” Haruka asked, cutting to the point rather than trying to flatter her friend. 

There was a pause, then the sound of movement that was probably getting pants from the laundryheap. “Is this anything like that time you needed a favor at the zoo?” 

“No-”

Makoto interrupted her, picking up where she’d left off. “Because if you get fired again for, I don’t know, trying to free the penguins-”

“Look there was a perfectly good excuse for breaking that animal out, she was being-”

“-You’re never going to afford to fix your engine, is the point I’m trying to make.” 

Haruka frowned at her mop. She quite liked her job actually, cleaning up after people wasn’t the most glamorous thing in the world, but at least she was cleaning up after crowds that mostly consisted of small children experiencing wonder. And scientists who were trying their best to keep the oceans diversely populated. But there was days like this where she found out at least one of them was doing something that seemed sketchy on every level. It was just like the zoo, when she’d found one of the snakes was being experimented on and she’d packed it home, cared for it, and then found a safe, happy home for it. 

“Makoto it’s really important this time.” 

There must have been something in her tone of voice that made the voice on the other side of the phone pause. Makoto sighed. “Okay, but you’re going to owe me.” 

“By this time tomorrow I might be working for you full time,” Haruka said, but she was only partially joking. 

“Okay. I’ll be headed there in a few minutes. We’re not setting a whale free or anything, are we?” Makoto didn’t sound as though she thought this was outside the realm of possibility. 

“No, not a whale,” she assured her. 

“Mmm.” Makoto wasn’t entirely convinced but hung up on her anyway. 

Haruka looked up from her conversation to see the mermaid watching her with interest. She appeared to have neutral buoyancy, just floating and moving slightly with the lightest movement of her tail. After searching on her phone for a few words she needed, Haruka waved for her attention, smiling again. 

“Friend.” 

The mermaid canted her head so Haruka repeated the sign and pointed at herself, not sure if she hadn’t understood what she was trying to convey or if her signing was too sloppy. 

“Friend help.” The mermaid took a moment to sign back, combining words they had already used.

Haruka nodded. Yes, she was going to help her. She narrowed her eyes and looked at her phone again, struggling to make a complex enough sentence to ask her next question. Or rather, to ask her questions in such a way the mermaid could answer in simple yes or no. 

“No water, death?” Haruka had to repeat herself, clarifying her gestures to get her question across to her mermaid.

The mermaid frowned at her, playing with a bit of long, green hair that had trailed over her shoulder. Her eyes were moving quickly, looking at Haruka and the room behind her. Was she considering her options? 

“Help.” Haruka signed hoping she would understand. Getting the mermaid out of the aquarium would be difficult enough, getting her out in a truck capable of holding water was going to be even more difficult. Not that they had access to that, Makoto’s truck was pretty basic, that meant it wasn’t a waterproof bed. 

After another moment’s consideration, the mermaid indicated 3 and then a gesture Haruka didn’t know. She tried hunting it up, then searched for words to do with time. Three hours. 

“Three hours.” She signed back, repeating a little more awkwardly. 

On the other side of the glass, the mermaid tilted her head and gently corrected the motion, getting Haruka to repeat herself until she had apparently done it to her satisfaction. Then she smiled and Haruka forgot everything she had been trying to learn to say with her hands. When the mermaid smiled, time stood still and Haruka couldn’t hear much other than the soft lap of water and the singing of an angelic choir. 

Oh boy.

Haruka was startled from her reverie when her phone buzzed and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Just Makoto texting to ask which gate she should pull up to. How long had she been staring at the mermaid? Haruka flipped through her browser to figure out how to tell the mermaid she would be back, and then returned to her cart out in the hallway. She made careful note of what room she had been in and the restricted access sign she hadn’t seen when she’d first gone in. 

She took a moment to text Makoto the best gate, along with a message that she needed to at least make sure her work could pass inspection for the night. Also could Makoto perhaps get her mad scientist friend to hack the security system so maybe none of them would spend time in jail. Haruka cruised through the rest of what she should have mopped, grabbing garbage and otherwise making sure it would pass a cursory inspection. 

And then she jogged up to the ground level to meet up with Makoto out in the staff parking lot. 

“What is all of this about?” Makoto asked, phone in her hand. “Ami’s not a mad scientists by the way. She’s just really really smart and I have no idea what she does. But she’s on cameras, we’re basically ghosts.” 

“Do you think we can drive to some secluded beach in three hours?” Haruka asked. 

“If you got me out of bed because you want to go on a drive- Haruka you have a bike even if your car isn’t running. I have to be up to open the bakery in a few hours.” Makoto sounded more than a little exasperated. 

“And, assuming we’re not all in jail tomorrow morning, I will be right at your side burning muffins.” Haruka was gratified that Makoto laughed at this statement. “But this is important. Back the truck up this way, I’ll direct you. We can do it in three hours, right? Way less, right?” 

“You’re not driving, I can do it in one hour.” 

“I could do it in half.” 

Makoto got into her truck and didn’t dignify this with an answer. 

Haruka helped her back into a space as close to where she would guess the tank was. “You okay to wait here? If someone comes by let them know you’re on a drop off.” 

“That’s only going to work so long,” Makoto said, leaning out the window to talk to her.

“I’ll be fast.” Haruka spoke with confidence, grinning at her friend.

Haruka jogged again, finding the staff entrance that would get her where she needed to go. It wasn’t a long hall, counting doors and corridors until she found the one that said restricted access and correlated to the door she’d accidentally slipped through earlier. She texted the door number to Ami who was, as far as she was concerned and despite what Makoto said, a mad scientist. A few seconds later the door clicked and Haruka was through. 

The upper part of the large tank the mermaid was far less interesting than the lower part- if you didn’t know what was in the tank. It was much harder to make out what was below the surface and the grid from above and there was little more up in this part of the building but tank controls and monitors. 

She was tempted to glance at the security camera, trusting Ami had taken care of it, but kept her head down just in case. Not that she was easily confused for anyone else in janitorial coveralls anyway. She was the tallest on the janitorial staff, lean and angular and blonde. Haruka kicked her shoes off, rolled her pants up, and dropped down to where the grid was preventing the mermaid from attempting to escape, gasping at the cold water. She knelt down, one pant leg soaking up to the knee. There wasn’t anything to be seen with the light reflecting off the water, so she wove her fingers down into the grid. Immediately, soft fingers touched the ends of hers, weaving to meet them. 

Haruka grinned and got back to her feet to climb out of the tank. Now that she was certain she had the right tank, she operated the machinery ro raise the grill and open the top of the tank. Almost as soon as it was open, the pale, green-blue shape of the mermaid was emerging from the water.

“Hi. Can you hear or, I don’t know. Talk?” Haruka asked, getting the grid far enough out of the way she could kneel down where the mermaid was climbing out. 

“Yes. But once I am out of the water it is best if I do not try to talk.” 

“Here, take my hands. I’ll help you up and then my friend has a truck and we’ll get you out of this place.” Haruka offered her arms and found them soon very wet and very full of mermaid. She was colder and lighter than Haruka had expected, skin the same temperature as the salt water in her tank. The mermaid wrapped her arms around her shoulders and her tail wound down around one leg so that Haruka could still walk. 

She stopped just long enough to close the grill and shove her feet back into her shoes. This was the part that worried Haruka the most, walking through the building with a mermaid in her arms. Just regular janitorial work. That it was long after business and working hours was to their benefit, as they didn’t pass a soul. 

“The hell is that?” Makoto half stepped out of her truck but then got back in and started the engine. 

Haruka pulled the blanket from behind the seat and, with Makoto’s help, put it on the seat so that the mermaid could cover most of her tail with it. She almost looked human- strangely dressed perhaps and a little more green than the standard variety, but human. 

“Um, so you can see why we needed to bust this one out, right?” Haruka asked.

She settled in the passenger seat so that the mermaid was between them and the least visible from either window. Still damp and cool, the mermaid leaned against her side and watched the window, her breathing shallow but steady. 

“Yeah. And the timeframe.” Makoto glanced at them from the corner of her eye and smiled at the security team member who was manning the booth. Once past, she adjusted her rear view mirror. “You know, he smiles just like my senpai.” 

Mostly the ride was quiet, the streets rather empty now that it was past the time most people were still out. Once the aquarium was closed, there wasn’t a lot of reason for anyone to be out this far. The whole truck grew tense when flashing lights started to come up behind them, but Makoto pulled to the side of the road and they passed right by. 

“I think I might be sick.” 

“If you’re going to be sick switch places with me,” Haruka said, glancing over at Makoto. 

“I’ve got this. I don’t trust you with my transmission after what happened to yours,” was the retort. 

Haruka was about to let Makoto know that if her transmission had been built to the specs she wanted, it would have done fine with the way she changed gears. And it would be, someday. If she could keep a job. 

When the mermaid was determined missing, would she still have a job? She had been more interested in making sure Makoto wasn’t going to get traced to this but it would be obvious when Haruka wasn’t clocked out at all that she was a person of interest in the specimen’s disappearance. Maybe most of the aquarium didn’t even know about her. 

“What do you think, good beach? Should we go further?” Makoto pulled to the side and checked the map on her phone. 

Haruka looked at the mermaid leaning against her. It had been almost an hour and her breathing was more shallow, her skin clammy and wan. Although she’d said three hours, Haruka thought maybe that was an overestimation on her part. 

“I think this will do. Once she is back in the water, everything will be okay. Right?” Haruka caught the mermaid’s attention.

The mermaid blinked slowly at her and nodded. 

They turned off the highway and made their way down toward the beach. The mermaid picked her head up when the car door opened and she could hear the ocean, her blue eyes turning intense. 

“Come on, almost there.” Haruka slid one arm under her tail and the over behind her back, leaving the blanket behind in the cab of the truck. 

The beach was virtually empty and Haruka just walked out, thigh-deep, into the water with the mermaid and lowered her into the water. Still holding onto one of her forearms, the mermaid breathed a deep sigh when she touched the ocean water, then smiled up at Haruka, her brilliant and time-stopping smile. 

“I ought to tell you something,” she said, her voice soft enough that Haruka had to lean down to hear her. Instead of saying anything, the mermaid leaned up and kissed her on the cheek. 

Haruka dropped her, stunned by the soft, cool lips on her cheek. 

“My name is Michiru.” 

There was something she was supposed to say but Haruka just put a hand on her cheek and stared at her, at a loss for words. Makoto came to her rescue once again, throwing a rock in their direction. 

“Tell her your name, dummy!”

“Haruka. My name is Haruka.” 

With a flip of her tail, Michiru was gone. Haruka was left at the shore with a cool spot on her cheek and one last time-stopping smile.


End file.
